Danny Firoth is an average thirteen year old who finds himself at the beginning of his eighth grade year, struggling with the common stressors that plague a boy of his age: bullies, homework, and his mother. Sabrina Drake is the new girl. She is beautiful, but carries a fantastic secret. “You’re a dragon!” Danny exclaims at the beginning of their epic journey. “I am a drake,” corrects Sabrina after a fierce battle with an ancient enemy, a Shadow. What follows is an explanation of legends as Danny learns that a simple card game, designed to pit the forces of the Light against those of the Dark, is actually reality.

Accepted into the White Rock Academy of Illumination, a school for young Squires destined to become Knights of the Light and battle the forces of the Dark with magical weapons called Bondeds, Danny joins his five closest friends in the training of their lives. Honed in the techniques of blade work by an Elvin swordmaster, Sir Syndil, and educated by a colorful assortment of professors, Danny and his friends are instructed in the way of the sword. However, discovering a powerful ability within himself that may mark him as the destined savior foretold, the Mageknight, Danny must question the intentions of his instructors. With the help of his friends, Danny must use everything he has learned to thwart the betrayal of someone within the Order of Light.

The ReviewThe opening chapters see our hero, Danny, begin a new term at High School, and are so keenly observed as to have taken me right back to my own school days. Danny is easy to like and identify with, drawn with touching and familiar moments - one of the more amusing being when his temperature soars and he feels he will ‘pass out’ when he meets the heroine, the beautiful and alluring Sabrina Drake.

My interest was piqued in chapter two, where aura’s and phantom silhouettes abruptly change the entire feeling of the book. Soon the reader is taken from the normalcy of school and immersed in a magical place of mythical creatures and ensuing adventure. The moonlit journey on the back of a huge dragon, surely a universal childhood fantasy, facilitates the transition perfectly.

Upon White Rock Island, undertaking their training to become Knights of the Light, I found that the duelling scenes were overly detailed and dragged on. That said, slower sections are tempered by moments of sheer imaginative brilliance, such as where table tops of figurine knights are magically brought to life and fight as though real, each table top morphing into a distinct landscape. This one example was written so well as to make me almost believe I had seen it with my own eyes. Such scenes would make for an awesome movie.

In the same imaginative vein, I found the idea of the ‘Bonded’ – a sword eternally encasing the soul of a passed Knight - both sad and captivating. While only fantasy, the idea really played on my mind, leaving me keen for Fife’s follow-up, to discover the fate of one such soul.

The novel’s main characters are woven with just enough texture as to make them believable, without enduring the tedium of their every innermost thought and feeling. However, I found that Danny became perhaps too formal in his utterances as the book progressed, causing me to lean more towards Alonso as he simply seemed – with his characteristic response of ‘whatever’ - more ‘real.’

Fife’s magical world is well thought-out and considered – using the Bermuda Triangle to explain the existence of an ancient portal between our world and that of the deadly Shadow’s.

Occasionally, repetition of a certain word or phrase (‘did as bid’ being perhaps the worst offender) had me wishing that Fife had reached for the thesaurus. Otherwise, the writing is easy-to-read, unaffected by over-the-top poetic tendencies, yet eloquent and pleasing.

Having enjoyed the magic and wonder of Fife’s world, I now feel, as no doubt do his characters, a little reluctant to return to the ‘real’ one, and look forward to the second instalment; Light & Dark: The Black Bonded.

Many thanks to Daniel M. Fife for entrusting, as my first review novel, his Young Adult debut, Light & Dark: The Awakening of the Mageknight.

Cheryl, thank you very much for the wonderful review and the blog looks amazing. I look forward to many more of your reviews as well as the opportunity for you to review Light & Dark: The Black Bonded, the next novel in the Light & Dark Series. Once more, thank you for your support, critiques, and suggestions, they have been well received.

Thanks for your kind words Daniel, I'm really happy to have helped. I can't wait for 'The Black Bonded' to find out what becomes of Sabrina & Danny, the legion of Shadows, and a certain fated sword. Keep up your excellent writing and I hope to hear from you soon!